Manchukuo (1932–1945) has long presented an interesting case for scholars of Japanese imperialism. Since Yamamuro Shin'ichi's 山室 信一 exploration of the chimera-like fusion of forces behind Manchukuo's founding, however, scholars have moved beyond the “puppet state” paradigm to interrogate its structural formation.Footnote 1 Many studies have shown how Manchukuo's hybrid sovereignty served as a proving ground for new ideas and institutions that had a profound impact on the Japanese metropole during wartime and beyond.Footnote 2 Scholars have paid particular attention to Manchukuo's authoritarian administrative institutions and the small group of bureaucrats responsible for developing them.Footnote 3 A major pillar in their institutional reform efforts, however, was the transformation of the bureaucracy itself through drastic changes to the civil service appointment process. The product of their reform efforts, then, was not just the state but the agents who represented it. In fact, when politicians and intellectuals on the Japanese mainland took up civil service reform to meet the needs of wartime mobilization in the 1940s, it was to Manchukuo that many looked for examples.Footnote 4 Yet, the historical development of Manchukuo's bureaucratic system remains relatively unstudied.
This study explores the institutional formation of the Manchukuo bureaucracy focusing on its recruitment and training processes. Over its short fourteen-year history, the Manchukuo bureaucracy evolved into an organization that was highly unique within the Japanese empire for its level of centralization and standardization. Recruitment and training processes provided the small group of military and civil planners with an effective means of controlling and channeling young recruits’ idealism into their new role as professional managers and vanguard soldiers for the state. The result was a cohort of bureaucrats with similar characteristics and backgrounds who were indoctrinated into the principles of militarism, developmentalism, and a radical belief in the state's authority to transform society.
These qualities developed through three distinct phases that are detailed in this article. In the first phase, radical pan-Asian activists laid the ideological and institutional groundwork for bureaucratic recruitment and training. In the second, military influence dominated, but increasingly came into conflict with Japanese reform bureaucrats demanding professionalization. The third phase saw the convergence and codification of these interests into a uniform bureaucratic culture under the rapid expansion of Manchukuo's wartime administrative state. As with other institutions in Manchukuo, then, the bureaucracy evolved as a hybridization of overlapping and competing political forces.
Looking beyond the collapse of the Japanese empire, this article concludes with a discussion of the legacy of the Manchukuo bureaucracy on postwar East Asia. Scholars of Japan have long argued that Manchukuo's bureaucratic elite translated their experiments on the continent into a foundation for technocratic institutions, fascism, and the developmental state after 1945.Footnote 5 Less understood is the enduring impact of Manchukuo's bureaucratic system on the thousands of colonized subjects it recruited – particularly from Korea and Taiwan. The rising influence of former Manchukuo bureaucrats in their postcolonial homelands reflects the developmental history of the Manchukuo bureaucracy in significant ways. As the children of this chimeric system, their experience foregrounds Manchukuo's contribution to the formation of technocratic identities and the rise of authoritarian and developmental state structures not just in Japan but throughout Cold War East Asia.
Foundations of the Manchukuo Bureaucracy, 1920–1932
While Manchukuo only came into existence as a state in 1932, the distinctive features of its administrative structure must be understood within the political and intellectual context of the previous decade. The global trend towards liberal internationalism that came out of the First World War catalyzed increasing discontent and radical activism among the Japanese right. Beginning in the early 1920s, young Japanese military officers and right-wing study groups perceived that the world was entering a final stage of global conflict where only the complete mobilization of society could stave off total annihilation.Footnote 6 Both groups judged the Japanese political order to be too corrupted by unfettered liberalism and capitalism to carry out the needed reforms. They therefore called first for a radical social transformation characterized by a return to the moral authority of traditional Asian values that would unite the people before the coming war. By the 1930s, right-wing activists in both military and civilian circles attempted to initiate radical reforms through increasingly militant action but met with limited success. So as a small group of Kwantung Army officers contemplated the expansion of the Japanese frontier into Manchuria, they saw it as an opportunity not only to advance strategic interests but also to experiment with institutional reorganization away from the political corruption and bureaucratic intransigence of the Japanese mainland.Footnote 7
These plans came to fruition with the Kwantung army's invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In the face of international condemnation and limited central government support for their invasion and occupation, Kwangtung army officers struck on an alternative arrangement that created an independent state under the protective guidance of the Japanese armed forces. The initial manifestation of this system envisioned a series of “self-governing bodies” (jichitai 自治体) under the direction of a “guidance board” (shidōbu 指導部) with the oversight and guidance of the Kwantung Army.Footnote 8 Lacking the expertise or local connections needed to build a state structure from scratch, army officers enlisted the help of local Chinese elites and Japanese civilians, particularly employees of the Southern Manchuria Railroad (or Mantetsu 満鉄), in forming an administrative system. This alliance was tenuous and indeed collapsed in the summer of 1932, but from the standpoint of the bureaucracy, established a basis for much of its institutional structure and cultural character.
In this early period, the task of recruiting and training civil officials fell to Kasagi Yoshiaki 笠木 良明 (1892–1955), a Mantetsu employee and government reform activist. Kasagai had met renowned pan-Asian intellectual Ōkawa Shūmei 大川 周明 (1886–1957) early in his career at Mantetsu and been inspired to join Ōkawa in forming the right-wing reform group Yūzonsha 猶存社 in 1920. Kasagi had no particular sympathy for the Kwantung Army or its defensive goals, but he saw the invasion of Manchuria as an opportunity to create a new type of government administration based on Ōkawa's vision for an Asian-style moral order.Footnote 9 In his organizing capacity for the Guidance Board, Kasagi formed the “Self-Governing Guidance Training Center” (Jichi shidō kunrenjo 自治指導訓練所) and set about recruiting idealistic students who would form the backbone of Manchuria's rural administration.
Though Kasagi held no formal position in the training center, his influence on the curriculum is evident both in the curriculum itself and his connection to most of the faculty. Despite its position as an educational institution for administrative officials, Kasagi's training center placed ideological indoctrination at a higher priority than professionalization, with 25 percent of class time dedicated to learning about the “spirit of self-governing guidance” (jichi shidō seishin 自治指導精神) and “self-governing guidance methodology” (jichi shidō hōhō 自治指導方法).Footnote 10 In this effort, Kasagi enlisted the help of Mukden lawyer and fellow Yūzonsha alumnus Nakano Koichi 中野 琥逸 (n.d.) to teach political philosophy and ideology, former Mantetsu employee and radical proponent of agricultural revivalism Kuchida Yasunobu 口田 康信 (1893–1945) to teach political science and nationalist ideology, and Mukden Library Director Etō Toshio 衛藤 利夫 (1883–1953) and Itō Musojirō 伊藤 六十次郎 (1905–1994) to teach Manchurian and Asian history in the pan-Asian context.Footnote 11 In addition, Kasagi brought in a parade of other pan-Asian ideologues both from Manchuria and Japan to give politically charged lectures that got students’ “youthful blood boiling.”Footnote 12
Kasagi also stressed the need for “practical training” (jissai kunren 実際訓練) and developing an intimate connection with the countryside. Students went on frequent visits to various parts of the new country meeting with locals and collecting information. In addition to his preference for field training, these excursions enabled students to conduct vital propaganda work across the country in advance of the Lytton Commission in the spring of 1932.Footnote 13 Moreover, despite his tenuous relationship with the military, Kasagi still saw a practical need for rudimentary paramilitary training. Physical exercise, including long marches through the countryside, was a central feature of the curriculum. Students also trained extensively in kendo, riflery, and horseback riding.Footnote 14
Following the foundation of Manchukuo on March 1, 1932, Kasagi's relationship with the Kwantung Army began to sour. Within the new government structure, the Self-government Guidance Board was transformed into the National Affairs Office (Shiseikyoku 資政局), which oversaw bureaucratic recruitment and training, with Kasagi as its head. Unbeknownst to Kasagi, however, the Kwantung Army signed a secret accord on March 10, 1932 with the days-old Manchukuo government giving the Army's Fourth Special Division the right to approve or dismiss any ethnic Japanese official in the Manchukuo government.Footnote 15 Army officials viewed Kasagi's support for decentralized regional authority, radical pan-Asian ideology, and growing powerbase as a threat to their plans for a more manageable centralized administration under Japanese control.Footnote 16 It was Kasagi's recruitment activities for the second class of bureaucratic trainees, however, that spelled his undoing. In April of 1932, Kasagi traveled to Japan, without notifying the army, and joined his old mentor Ōkawa in screening a new batch of recruits. Army commanders only learned of Kasagi's unilateral action when ninety-seven young men (including three Koreans and two Chinese) arrived in Mukden the following month to start training. Even more alarming to military leaders was that this influx of new recruits coincided with the May 15 assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi 犬養 毅 (1855–1932) – a failed coup attempt in which Kasagi's mentor Ōkawa was implicated.Footnote 17 The incident provided Kasagi's opponents in both the army and the Manchukuo government with sufficient cause not just to purge him from his powerful position but also to reorganize the bureaucratic system. The National Affairs Office was eliminated, with its primary functions being divided among other departments under greater military control. Bureaucratic recruitment and training came under the purview of the powerful General Affairs Agency (Sōmuchō 総務庁) where Kasagi's training institute was reorganized as the Great Unity Academy (Daidō gakuin 大同学院).
In spite of his ouster, Kasagi and his ideas continued to have significant influence over bureaucrats in the early years of Manchukuo. Nearly all of the recruits Kasagi brought over from Japan in the spring of 1932 were allowed to continue with their training in the reorganized academy and received appointments with the blessing of the military.Footnote 18 In January 1933, Kasagi returned to Japan where he founded the Society for the Construction of the Great Asia (Dai Ajia kensetsu kyōkai 大亜細亜建設協会). Through the organization, he continued to promote his ideas about political organization on the continent and recruit idealistic young men amenable to his philosophy to join the Manchukuo bureaucracy via the new system. He began publishing the monthly magazine Great Asia (Dai Ajia 大亜細亜) in May, from which he criticized the Manchukuo government's centralization and Japanization.Footnote 19 Kasagi's disciples in Manchukuo's regional administration made it the unofficial journal of the bureaucracy, in which they continued to circulate his ideas and organize in resistance to centralization up until the major civil service reforms of 1938.Footnote 20 Meanwhile, a new political force had arrived in Manchukuo with other plans for the bureaucracy.
Militarization or Professionalization, 1932–1937
Just as the Kwantung Army was pushing out Manchuria-based idealists from the civil government in the summer of 1932, reform bureaucrats – newly arrived from Japan – began gaining influence. These were young men, predominantly mid-level officials, serving in the Japanese ministries of Finance (Ōkura 大蔵) and Commerce and Industry (Shōkōshō 商工省) who were critical of the reactive and regulatory state and dissatisfied with the inefficiency of politicization and inter-ministerial competition. Much like their counterparts in the military, reform bureaucrats were deeply critical of both capitalism and socialist internationalism and saw Manchukuo as an opportunity to refashion the state as an administrative, interventionist entity capable of meeting the large-scale technical challenges of modern society.Footnote 21 Moreover, their willingness to concede authority over security-related issues to the military should have made for an ideal partnership.
From the outset, however, reform bureaucrats had different ideas about bureaucratic recruitment that quickly came into conflict with the military leadership. The Kwantung Army had been filling various government departments through a complex system of ethnic quotas, with a small group of Japanese dominating supervisory and central government posts and Chinese relegated to low-level and rural administrative positions. Reform bureaucrats considered most of these existing officials “lacking in the knowledge and experience for modern government administration.”Footnote 22 They particularly looked down on co-opted local Chinese officials, who they argued only had experience with the “half-feudal, half-colonial system” of the previous regime.Footnote 23 From the military's perspective, however, this convoluted system of quotas, ethnic division of labor, and centralized authority – a not so subtle divide-and-conquer tactic – served their immediate goal of pacification. As the main force in carrying out the reorganization and administration of society, reform bureaucrats understood that they would first need to rationalize and professionalize the civil service, which, they argued, necessitated recruiting more suitable candidates from among Japan's bureaucratic and intellectual elite.Footnote 24 This became a perpetual point of conflict between the military and the civil government in Manchukuo, but the military's ultimate authority over personnel decisions gave them significant leverage over the evolution of the bureaucracy.
The dual objectives of professionalization and pacification were particularly reflected in the practice of direct recruitment in Manchukuo's early years. Manchukuo's legal regulations for bureaucratic organization (kansei 官制), as established in the spring of 1932, contained remarkable flexibility regarding appointments, which vested ultimate authority in the office of the Prime Minister of the State Council (Kokumuin sōri 国務院総理).Footnote 25 This was in part to facilitate military oversight over bureaucratic staffing, as discussed above, but it also enabled the special appointment of experienced officials to supervisory positions through an expedited and informal screening system based on faith in the quality and character of the Japanese imperial bureaucracy. This even included non-Japanese elites with experience in Japan's military or colonial service.Footnote 26
While direct appointment was quick and efficient, it did not present a long-term solution to establishing either a professional bureaucracy or co-opting local elites for regional pacification. This would require a system for recruiting talented, if inexperienced, men and training them to carry out these duties. When the General Affairs Agency took over Kasagi's Self-Government Guidance Training Center in the summer of 1932, it was promptly reopened as the Great Unity Academy (henceforth GUA) for this exact purpose. Despite the name change, however, much of the character of the previous institution remained intact.
The most significant change to the academy was the increased level of military involvement in its operation. The Director of the General Affairs Agency, a civil appointee, technically served concurrently as President of the GUA. The Kwantung Army, however, ensured that the position of headmaster (gakkan 学監) – in charge of recruitment, staffing, curriculum, and daily operations – always went to a military official. Fujii Jūrō 藤井 重郎 (1883–1937), a Japanese Army captain serving in the first reserves and contemporary of key figures in the invasion of Manchuria, served as headmaster for the first class of recruits in 1932 before returning to active duty.Footnote 27 His replacement, Nakahara Hachirō 中原 八郎 (d. 1948), also a reserve captain, oversaw the second through fifth classes of GUA recruits. Consequentially, the military's control over training new bureaucrats resulted in an emphasis on physical discipline both in recruitment and instruction unlike anywhere else in the Japanese empire.
As part of the recruitment program established by Fujii in 1932, the selection committee considered physical strength and military discipline to be a crucial element in an applicant's ability to succeed. Manchukuo's harsh winters required a workforce that could operate effectively in temperatures frequently dropping below -20 degrees Celsius. As such, applicants were subject to a physical examination that generally followed military guidelines for height, weight, hearing, and vision, as well as screening for evidence of diseases and physical deformities.Footnote 28 In principle, applicants were also required to have completed Japan's compulsory military training (gunji kyōren 軍事教練) prior to their appointment.Footnote 29 In addition, the committee placed a priority on applicants with experience in martial arts and team sports. The result was a class of young men that were physically fit and had at least basic experience in organizational discipline that would serve as a foundation for their training in Manchukuo.
The military's influence over bureaucratic training also resulted in an increasing militarization of the GUA's practices and culture. The continued presence of anti-Japanese resistance forces in the countryside meant that some level of self-defense training was necessary for basic survival. The military, moreover, considered future bureaucrats – most of whom took appointments in regional government – an important force for pacification in the countryside.Footnote 30 Under military command, paramilitary training at the academy increased to 20 percent of all instruction time.Footnote 31 At the most basic level, drill instruction and marching were emphasized to increase discipline and physical stamina. Students went on frequent marches through the countryside even in harsh weather conditions.Footnote 32 They also practiced horseback riding, rifle and handgun marksmanship, martial arts, and carried out a simulated “police action” against bandits on the school campus.Footnote 33
While at the GUA, students were indoctrinated into a culture of service and blood sacrifice to the state. Particularly in Manchukuo's early years, when armed resistance in the countryside was rampant, the number of bureaucrats killed in the field was significant. GUA administrators promoted these deaths as the ultimate expression of the bureaucrat's “sacred duty.”Footnote 34 Lectures and songs told students to embody the spirit of the samurai (shishi 志士) sacrificing everything for the state.Footnote 35 Both the GUA and Manchukuo government Office of Information published memorial volumes commemorating the heroic deaths of bureaucrats.Footnote 36 In 1936, the national radio station even broadcast a dramatization of the death of a young Japanese bureaucrat and GUA graduate while on duty the previous year.Footnote 37
Aside from militarism and self-sacrifice, the GUA also promoted a culture of masculine freedom associated with the fleetingness of youth. The military headmasters were known to treat their students like soldiers heading off to war, encouraging them to engage in manly vices. On the school's opening day in 1934, Headmaster Nakahara declared: “… youth is truly like a flower. So, drink to your heart's content, and buy whores ….”Footnote 38 Though students generally had little free time during their education, Saturday night curfews were extended to give students time to go out on the town. These excursions were known to get quite rowdy. Shortly after the opening of the new campus building in 1934, a drunken game of chicken caused one student to drop his pistol, which discharged a round that ricocheted through the halls. Since no one was injured, Nakahara wrote the damage off as an incident of “boys will be boys.”Footnote 39
The military leadership at the academy also made moves to promote professionalization, first by standardizing recruitment to favor graduates of Japan's elite universities. The initial recruitment plan in December 1932 set application quotas for participating schools, with Tokyo Imperial University, Kyoto Imperial University, and Waseda University collectively receiving 30 percent of the available spots. This caused some degree of controversy among Japanese university students and administrators that ultimately resulted in the application of more uniform quotas.Footnote 40 Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of successful applicants from 1932 to 1935 were university graduates, predominantly from the imperial university system or elite private universities in Tokyo.Footnote 41
The GUA's military headmasters also replaced many of Kasagi's ideologue lecturers with Manchukuo government department heads and prominent reform bureaucrats in a move to make instruction more practical. The visiting bureaucrats, however, considered the rowdy character and zealous ideology of the student body unbecoming of future government officials. Lecturers complained of arriving in class to find more than half the students truant. Moreover, they lacked the professional and technical skills needed for the modern administrative state and had no interest in learning them.Footnote 42 By 1934, Director of the Office of Legal Affairs Ōdachi Shigeo 大達 茂雄 (1892–1955) was campaigning to shut down the academy, calling it “nothing more than a dormitory for Manchuria rōnin 浪人.”Footnote 43 This brought the issue to the attention of the central authorities in the Kwantung Army, who subsequently invited Kyushu University Professor Handa Toshiharu 半田 敏治 (1892–1967) to assess the situation.
Handa's background as a member of both the military and intellectual elite made him an ideal choice to reform the GUA in a manner acceptable to both reform bureaucrats and the Kwantung Army. Graduating from the Japanese Military Academy in 1912, he had been a contemporary of many of the young officers agitating for political change who ended up in the Kwantung Army in the 1930s. After leaving active duty in 1924, he studied law at Kyūshū Imperial University under the supervision of former Yūzonsha member Kanokogi Kazunobu 鹿子木 員信 (1884–1949).Footnote 44 When he arrived in Manchukuo in the spring of 1934 as a full-time instructor at the GUA, he determined that the academy was not a complete loss. Handa appreciated the zealous spirit of the young students. That spirit, however, had to be channeled through structure and discipline into service for the state.Footnote 45
Handa proposed a number of reforms to establish administrative oversight and control over the instructional process that brought together stakeholders from both the Kwantung Army and reform bureaucrats. First, he argued that separating the academy from the General Affairs Agency and putting it under the direct supervision of a specially appointed president – drawn from high-ranking, active-duty military personnel – would provide more authoritative management and effective communication with military leaders. Next, Handa proposed appointing active-duty military officers and experienced bureaucrats as department heads charged with establishing discipline, order, and a standardized curriculum. In addition, he argued that permanent instructors should be limited and replaced with more active-duty officials appointed as special Education Officers (kyōkan 教官). Handa also called for reforms to the recruitment process by implementing an examination system – under the administration of career bureaucrats in the Office of Personnel – to ensure that all recruits had the basic skills and aptitude necessary for modern civil service. Finally, Handa proposed channeling the academy's militarized culture through guidance and increasing student self-regulation and self-discipline.Footnote 46
Handa's reforms proved acceptable to both the military and reform bureaucrats, not only ending calls for the academy's closure but also extending those reforms across the Manchukuo bureaucracy. Beginning with the academy's fifth class in 1936, the old guard of low- and mid-level bureaucrats were sent to the GUA for reeducation.Footnote 47 The following year the GUA President was granted statuary authority to devise and oversee training programs for both new recruits and active-duty personnel across all government departments.Footnote 48 Meanwhile, the former leader of the movement to shut down the academy, Ōdachi Shigeo, used his promotion to Director of the General Affairs Agency to carry out thorough civil service reform that codified and expanded on Handa's proposals in the form of the Civil Service Law (Bunkanrei 文官令) of 1938.Footnote 49
Of Professionals and Partisans, 1938–1945
The civil service reforms of 1938 constituted a major step towards centralizing and rationalizing the bureaucratic ranks that coincided with major developments in Manchukuo's position within the empire. Reform bureaucrats’ successful push for state-directed industrial development and mass mobilization, along with the expanding military conflict with China, necessitated a massive expansion of the administrative state that could not be filled through personnel exchanges from Japan alone. As a result, the Civil Service Law of 1938 made significant changes to recruitment practices and laid the foundations for Manchukuo's bureaucratic culture during wartime.
The two most significant reforms in the Civil Service Law were the establishment of a civil service examination system and the prohibition of ethnic, class, or academic discrimination in hiring or promotion.Footnote 50 According to its authors, their objective was to create a fair employment system and promote greater ethnic and technical diversity.Footnote 51 The underlying agenda of the reforms, however, was not so much diversity as uniformity. Unlike in Japan, the initial examination process for civil and legal officials was identical. In addition, the Manchukuo examination certified technicians (gijutsukan 技術官) and teachers (kyōikukan 教育官), thus ensuring that all government appointees met common standards.Footnote 52 The Civil Service Law also required all active-duty bureaucrats appointed before 1938 to take and pass a Special Eligibility Examination (tokubetsu tekikaku kōshi 特別適格考試) in order to maintain their status.Footnote 53 This provided an avenue for purging from the government ranks those with ideological inconsistencies or lacking in proper skills.
Structurally, the civil service examination was not significantly different from that of the metropole. The examination process consisted of two separate tests.Footnote 54 The first was the Certificate Examination (shikaku kōshi 資格考試), a written exam designed to test applicants’ academic skills in seven required and two elective fields.Footnote 55 Questions were devised and evaluated by the Civil Service Examination Committee (Kōtō bunkan kōshi iinkai 高等文官考試委員会), whose members were prominent professors from Japanese universities and high-ranking officials in Manchukuo.Footnote 56
While the format of the Certificate Examination may have been familiar to those taking the civil service examination in Japan, the content was significantly different. The questions varied from year to year, but their underlying themes reveal both the concerns of reform bureaucrats and the Kwantung Army in establishing Manchukuo's bureaucratic character. Questions regarding basic and civil law reveal a strong concern that applicants understand the legal basis for the wartime state.Footnote 57 For example, questions focused on issues such as emergency powers (1938, 1942), the supreme right of command versus the advisory right of the cabinet (1940, 1943), the right of pardon or amnesty (1939, 1942), and the role of civil law in property claims (1938–1942). The questions in the East Asian History subject suggest that it was important for prospective bureaucrats to understand the role of the state in national prosperity. Questions specifically contrasted Japan's rapid emergence as a world power with Chinese stagnation and partition at the hands of Western imperialists (1939–1943). The history syllabus also tested applicants on their understanding of Japan's historical justifications for the expansion of the empire into the continent. Thus, it provided the examination committee with additional insight into a candidate's political and ideological disposition.Footnote 58
The second stage of the Civil Service Examination was the Employment Examination (saiyō kōshi 採用考試), which demonstrated both a continued concern for militarizing the bureaucracy and a unique interest in maintaining ideological consistency. The examination comprised two stages: an interview and a physical examination. The latter mirrored the military-inspired requirements and practices implemented by GUA recruiters in 1932, and the selection committee continued to look favorably on recruits with martial arts and athletic experience.Footnote 59 The interview, though similar in principle to the oral portion of Japan's Civil Service Examination, in practice was far more concerned with establishing an applicant's ideological position than his academic ability.Footnote 60 The case of Korean recruit Ku Ponghoe 具鳳會 (1920–1997) offers a useful example. According to Ku, the fact that he had graduated from Posŏng College (precursor to present-day Korea University) marked him as a potential anti-Japanese radical. During his interview, the committee began by asking him to give a critique of the Government-General of Korea under Minimi Jirō's 南 次郎 administration. They followed up by asking his opinion on such controversial topics as the recently instituted name-change order for Koreans (sōshi kaimei 創始改名), assimilation policies, and the government-ordered shutdown of private Korean-language newspapers.Footnote 61 Ku still managed to pass the examination, which suggested that having a politically sensitive background was not automatically disqualifying provided one could produce the correct ideological response.
The Civil Service examination was thus designed to recruit individuals capable of meeting the specific needs of Manchukuo. Successful candidates continued to come primarily from Japan's elite public universities, but an increasing number were graduates of higher technical colleges with advanced skills. The examination selected for those with a foundation in law and a strong understanding of the fundamentals of wartime mobilization and state intervention. Moreover, it continued to emphasize physical fitness and discipline as a basic requirement for government service. These traits served as the basis for Manchukuo's bureaucratic culture that was fully developed through the training process.
In addition to codifying recruitment practices, the Civil Service Law of 1938 also established a centralized system for indoctrinating new and existing bureaucrats and other state officials into a uniform “bureaucratic way” (kanridō 官吏道). The GUA continued to train central government officials, as well as administrators in the Concordia Association (Kyōwakai 協和会) mass party and Manchukuo's new Special Public Corporations (tokubetsu kōsha 特別公社). Low-level local officials trained at Regional Administrative Training Centers (chihō gyōsei kunren sho 地方行政訓練所) through a GUA-devised curriculum.
The content of this training reflects elements of the shared, strongly statist political philosophy of reform bureaucrats and military elites. Interpretations of state theory varied somewhat between factions, but bureaucratic training materials demonstrate a broad consensus understanding of the state as an organic, total, and moral entity. The state in Manchukuo was fashioned as “living body” (seimietai 生命体) with individuals constituting organic “cells” collectively and interconnectedly contributing to its existence and development.Footnote 62 The state was total and all-encompassing, functioning through individual, family, and ethnicity. State philosophy rejected the “mechanistic view” of independently operating individuals and sub-groups, arguing that the individual derived his very existence from the state.Footnote 63 The underlying force binding the state together was a fundamental “spirit” originating in Japan's developmental history but universalized in the creation of Manchukuo as the “national foundation spirit,” (kenkoku seishin 建国精神).Footnote 64 This unifying spirit was characterized by a moral order maintained through a series of social obligations based on a hierarchy of relationships derived from Confucian tradition that bound individuals to family, community, and state.Footnote 65 According to Handa Toshiharu, this moral order served as the basis for state power: “Morality is the first principle. Power, however, is necessary to make this a reality. Power is inherently justified in so far as it helps to realize and act in service of morality.”Footnote 66 In practical terms, this meant that Manchukuo was not governed by rule of law, but rather, the law served as a vehicle for a greater morality. This “unity of law and morality” (hōdōichinyo 法道一如) authorized the state to take extra-legal action when it was deemed to be an impediment to maintaining the moral order.Footnote 67 In this context, the role of the bureaucrat in Manchukuo embraced a growing trend among authoritarian states towards administrative activism.Footnote 68
In part a consequence of the ad hoc nature of Manchukuo's early legal establishment, the bureaucrat's legal relationship with the people was contradictory. In principle, Manchukuo was a state founded on the protection of fundamental human rights. Promulgated in 1932 and presented to the Western powers as evidence of Manchukuo's liberal foundation, the Human Rights Protection Law (Jinken hoshōhō 人権保障法) purported to defend the people's right to life, industry, and equality of race and religion. It also guaranteed the right to petition the government and protection from corrupt officials.Footnote 69 The state could, however, expressly revoke these rights during “war and times of crisis.”Footnote 70 Moreover, the rights themselves were contingent upon the boundaries of the law, which was merely a vehicle for a higher and poorly defined moral order.
As far as their training was concerned, the bureaucrat's relationship with the people was more as paternal guide than public servant. Despite the popular right to petition the government, Article Five of the Civil Service Law only required bureaucrats to “diligently study” (kensan 研鑽) and “consider” (sasshi 察し) the popular will and apply it to the creation and revision of national policy.Footnote 71 As training manuals made clear, this consideration did not mean “pandering to the public will” but rather staying “one step ahead.”Footnote 72
Manchukuo's governing culture cast the people as objects in need of “guidance” (shidō 指導), both because of the exceptional and dire circumstances of the time and their innate inability to guide themselves. Instructors described Manchukuo as existing in a perpetual state of danger with the imperial ambitions of Britain, America, and Russia threatening on all sides.Footnote 73 This constant threat necessitated the rapid development of a “national defense state,” which required guidance and direction from a class of skilled “managers” (keieika 経営家) and “spiritual guides” (seishinteki shidōsha 精神的指導者).Footnote 74 Moreover, Manchukuo's multiethnic population contained “many levels of cultural advancement” (mindo 民度), suggesting that not all people were uniformly capable of self-defense or self-government.Footnote 75 Manchukuo's non-Japanese population in particular needed assistance to have their primitive “fishing and hunting age” culture “opened up to modern civilization.”Footnote 76 The bureaucrat, training manuals insisted, was the one with the necessary “resolve, skill and capacity” to guide these helpless people and cultivate the new nation.Footnote 77 This authorized bureaucrats not just to passively administer the law but to actively create it.Footnote 78
This authority to intervene in social, political, and economic life was itself modeled on the role of the military, with whom the bureaucracy acted as a junior partner. In his lectures to students, Handa Toshiharu argued that the military was the only organization to bridge the divide between the “feudal military spirit” and modern science. Soldiers embodied the spirit of the nation in their effort to establish a “moral world.”Footnote 79 As such, their natural role was as the “vanguard” of the people.Footnote 80 Handa contended that the army's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was a manifestation of this spirit. The military had observed both the corruption and lawlessness of the Chinese regime, as well as their inability to hold back the threat of invasion by Euro-American imperialists. Under these conditions, the military took the lead in establishing order, justice, and economic development under an authority confirmed through blood sacrifice.Footnote 81 As such, Handa commissioned the young bureaucrats to help extend the mission started by the military into all sectors of society and prepare for a total war.Footnote 82
The militarized model extended into bureaucratic professionalization that emphasized the bureaucrat's primary loyalty to the state. Since, according to Manchukuo's Organizational Law (Soshiki hō 組織法), the right to appoint government officials resided with the emperor and his government, bureaucrats learned that “like the soldier, [the bureaucrat] does not derive his status from the people.”Footnote 83 As such, bureaucrats were directed to give their “loyalty” (chūsei 忠誠) to the state –a principle that was legally enshrined in the first article of the Civil Service Law.Footnote 84 This loyalty was a life-long commitment to the complete sublimation of the self for the state, which extended even beyond the term of one's appointment.Footnote 85
The state required order and demanded bureaucrats maintain “discipline” (kiritsu 規律), “self-restraint” (sessei 節制), and “obedience” (fukujū 服従).Footnote 86 In practice this meant strict observance of hierarchy and abandoning all other personal obligations. The Civil Service Law instructed bureaucrats to follow orders from their superiors “directly and to the letter.”Footnote 87 Training manuals likewise told bureaucrats to heed the advice of their superiors and avoid letting their own personal thoughts and opinions intrude on their government work.Footnote 88 Even the needs of the family were to be subordinated to the state.Footnote 89 The ultimate expression of self-sacrifice, however, was laying down one's life for the state. By the end of the 1930s, the countryside was a far less dangerous place for bureaucrats than it had been in 1932, but Japan's expanding war in the Asia Pacific region – and the consequential rise in military conscription – provided ample opportunities for bureaucrats to commit to blood sacrifice.Footnote 90
At the GUA, future bureaucrats experienced order and discipline through strict hierarchy, surveillance, and regimentation in a manner more reminiscent of military recruits than civil servants. Students lived together in a dormitory with rooms broken up into squads run by a designated squad leader and a weekly duty officer. They were held to a strict code of conduct that dictated proper comportment and interpersonal relationships both inside and outside the school.Footnote 91 Squad leaders and duty officers were required to complete daily reports on students’ activities along with regular roll-call lists and submit them to the dean of students after breakfast every morning.Footnote 92 Time was regulated by bugle calls and daily life punctuated by a series of harsh physical endurance activities.Footnote 93
In Manchukuo, the bureaucrat existed in a state of complete dependence on the state. During their training at the GUA, students relied on the state for housing, food, and clothing, as well as a modest salary.Footnote 94 Following appointment, they were forbidden from seeking employment or participating in business activities without prior permission.Footnote 95 At the same time, their relationship with the state afforded them certain rights and privileges exclusive to civil officials. First and foremost was a “right to status” (mibunjō no ken 身分上の権), which secured an individual's position within the bureaucratic hierarchy and the broader society for the duration of his appointment.Footnote 96 Additional financial and social benefits derived from one's status level. These included the rights to salary, public housing, pension, and reimbursement for expenses incurred in the course of their work.Footnote 97 In a very practical sense, these injunctions and incentives served to prevent corruption within the government via conflicts of personal economic interest. They also bound bureaucrats to the state.
The militarization of Manchukuo bureaucrats was not just disciplinary but also involved actual paramilitary training. As Japan's military commitments expanded after 1937 the Kwantung Army leadership extended military readiness outside the boundaries of traditional conscription to all government personnel. Building on the tradition of basic police training in the early years of the GUA, the leadership drastically expanded the complexity and scale of paramilitary training required of new bureaucrats. In 1938, the curriculum included training in the principles of military command, anti-aircraft defense measures and tactics, and truck driving, as well as public order and propaganda techniques.Footnote 98 Two years later, students were training in a variety of weaponry from machine guns and hand grenades to anti-aircraft guns. Classes covered military rules of order, radio operation and maintenance, anti-insurgency tactics, first-aid, and vehicle maintenance. Students participated in eighteen days of field exercises practicing maneuvers at squad, platoon, and schoolwide levels that culminated in two days of simulated combat.Footnote 99
In Manchukuo, then, bureaucratic identity operated in two interlocking modes that derived from the combined interests of military and bureaucratic reformers, and wrapped in the discourse of traditional Asian values. Director of the General Affairs Agency, Hoshino Naoki 星野 直樹 (1892–1978), summed this up succinctly in his opening address at the GUA in 1938: “Today's bureaucrats must … be endowed with a union of the samurai's spirit and the merchant's business sense (shikon shōsai 士魂商才) … without these progress can neither be established nor exist.”Footnote 100 These characteristics had, to a certain extent, been present in the Manchukuo bureaucracy from its very foundations, but the 1938 bureaucratic reforms codified, normalized, and reinforced it as the “bureaucratic way.” For those who experienced Manchukuo's bureaucratic culture, particularly in those final years, the influence proved to be long lasting, manifesting itself in their careers over the following decades.
Legacies: Post-1945
The Soviet invasion of Manchukuo on August 9, 1945 and Japan's unconditional surrender to the allies six days later may have spelled the end for Manchukuo but not for its bureaucrats. As Japanese returned to their defeated homeland, Koreans and Chinese who had worked in the Manchukuo bureaucracy found their way into newly independent states. Former Manchukuo bureaucrats brought and applied the skills and ideas they had developed to (re)building these states. The influence of Manchukuo's bureaucratic culture varied in each situation, but the similarities foreground a legacy that extended into the foundations of the administrative structures of Cold War East Asia.
As the dominant power in Manchuria, researchers have highlighted the legacy of the Manchukuo bureaucracy in postwar Japan. There, the same reform bureaucrats who designed the Manchukuo system ascended to leadership positions in the postwar state, where they built on their experiences to fashion Japan into a developmental state.Footnote 101 For these men, the compromises with the military had never been satisfactory, so the elimination of competition after 1945 was an opportunity to redesign the state according to an unfulfilled ideal.Footnote 102 As a consequence, analysis of the developmental state and the Manchukuo model in Japan has tended to downplay its militarized aspects in favor of a legacy of technocratic professionalization.Footnote 103 To be sure, the authoritarian principles of “freedom through control, innovation through organization, autonomy via community, and status via hierarchy,” remained largely intact.Footnote 104 These, however, had always been points of overlap with the military in Manchukuo.
The legacy of Manchukuo's bureaucratic system in other parts of Japan's former empire, on the other hand, is not as well studied. While scholars have done much of the background work necessary to identify former Manchukuo bureaucrats from Taiwan and Korea and trace their post-1945 careers,Footnote 105 analysis of how they interpreted and adapted their experience to the radically changing conditions of their homelands remains limited. The evidence we have suggests that the blending of militarization and professionalization and the unique character of Manchukuo officialdom proved highly adaptable to the complex conditions of liberation, decolonization, and the rising Cold War.
South Korea is perhaps the best example. Following liberation, former Manchukuo bureaucrats were able to leverage their skills in service of the new state, but lacked the authority or experience needed for leadership in the multifarious politics of postcolonial Korea. By the late 1950s they were looking to their experience in Manchukuo as a remedy for what they perceived as an undisciplined and corrupt state.Footnote 106 Former Manchukuo bureaucrats, GUA graduates in particular, continued to associate through both formal and informal networks, utilizing these connections to build bridges with Manchukuo alumni in other sectors, including the military.Footnote 107 Their alliance in the 1960s with a small group of military officers, who also had experienced Manchukuo as graduates of the Manchukuo Military Academy, ultimately provided these bureaucrats with a position as junior partners in the transformation of the state under the dual banners of security and development in what one South Korean scholar has termed a “Manchurian modern.”Footnote 108
The development of this so-called Manchurian network of military and civil officials in South Korea is generally explained through the web of personal and professional ties that originated in the shared geographic and temporal context of Manchukuo.Footnote 109 However, the hybrid military-professional character of the Manchukuo bureaucracy suggests that the network was also built from a shared institutional experience and ideological vocabulary. Like their military counterparts, Koreans in the Manchukuo bureaucracy were trained to be self-disciplining and self-sacrificing, putting the needs of the state ahead of not only their own interests but also the people. They were taught to be highly critical of liberal capitalism, individualism, and democracy. Moreover, they were conditioned to be soldiers, both literally and figuratively, following the military's lead. In this context, then, it is unsurprising that they came to embrace authoritarian developmentalism under military leadership as a solution to the strategic and economic conditions of the Cold War.
Former Manchukuo bureaucrats also fared well under militarized regimes even when the leadership had actively fought against Japan. In Taiwan, the small number of returning GUA graduates faced significant legal hurdles to continuing their careers. The implementation of martial law in 1949, however, appears to have catalyzed their reentry into public service, albeit predominantly in local and regional administration.Footnote 110 Even in North Korea, a small contingent of former Manchukuo officials found success. Due in part to geographic proximity, many of the Koreans recruited into the Manchukuo bureaucracy were from Korea's northern border regions.Footnote 111 Though most had fled south by 1948, the handful who chose the North rapidly achieved positions of power. The fact that most of these men possessed unique technical skills and experience is certainly one explanation for their success despite their history as Japanese collaborators.Footnote 112 Some of these men may also have held strong socialist beliefs even before their time in Manchuria.Footnote 113 Nonetheless, the hybrid of militarized-professionalized qualities these men absorbed in Manchukuo served the security and developmental goals of the communist leadership in the North just as well as in the South. In most cases the ideological vocabulary was different, but the underlying aims were the same. In North Korea, former Manchukuo bureaucrats became champions for state centralization, mass mobilization of the population for developmental goals, and the expansion of the security state.
The continued presence of former Manchukuo bureaucrats in positions of power throughout East Asia suggests the adaptability of Manchukuo's bureaucratic culture to new institutional forms. This is not to suggest that all these post-imperial states were structurally the same. Nor is it to argue that they were all modeled, intentionally or unintentionally, on Manchukuo. Nonetheless, the Manchukuo bureaucracy and its legacy offer a window into the rise of developmentalism and authoritarianism in the post-World War II era that deviates from the traditional Cold War binary. It identifies the military–bureaucratic nexus under the banner of development as a trans-war phenomenon with a genealogy in East Asia that runs, at least in part, through Manchukuo.
